


You are their sister

by MandoGab



Series: you have one life [modern one-shots] [1]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Family, Hera is a lovely mom (as always), Multi, Sabine and Kanan talk, Sabine is a sister, Ursa as a bad mom, poor family vs rich family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:53:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25954792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MandoGab/pseuds/MandoGab
Summary: Sabine Wren ran away from home when she was 14. She was tired of constantly following her mother's orders, who wanted to make her an ideal child. Since childhood, the girl has worked hard, training boxing and doing gymnastics.Ursa Wren wanted her daughter to win podiums, awards, to become better and better, to strive for perfection, to make her dreams come true. However, everything she wanted for her own child hid dark secrets that not all could see.Now, Sabine Wren's 16 years old. There are only two years left when he has to fulfill his mother's demands.The price of a new life is trying to come to terms with the old. The girl has no choice. The price is too high.However, she knows that she can't lose what she has gained - the true, loving family.___Modern AU of Star Wars: Rebels
Relationships: Ezra Bridger/Sabine Wren, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios/Sabine Wren, Jacen Syndulla & Sabine Wren, Kanan Jarrus & Sabine Wren
Series: you have one life [modern one-shots] [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883752
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	You are their sister

"Harder! Higher! More precisely!" Bo-Katan shouted again and again. Sabine gasped, wondering when the woman would finally tear her throat off and let her go a bit. She hit the sack with all her might, watching it pop away from her clenched hand. However, the smile did not appear on the trainer's face, as if she had expected it.  
It was the same with her mother's pursed lips. Sabine could only count on her brother, who rose from his seat, cheering for her. And she should have mentioned that it was her half-brother.

"Good, but not perfect," her mother commented, giving her a cool look.

"It will never be perfect for you," Sabine muttered under her breath, pulling off the gloves in her hand. She couldn't wait for the moment when she would simply pass her mother and get into Hera's car, and she would take her to a real home, full of understanding.

"If you finally focused only on this sport, you'd be much better off," Ursa replied, looking at her.

"Mom wrote that she will be soon." Ezra entered their conversation, walking up to the older sister and announcing her happy news. Sabine nodded.

"Nobody taught this brat not to interrupt his elders?" Ursa mocked. "This whole family is worth each other," she muttered under her breath.

Sabine said nothing. But she took Ezra's hand and threw the gloves at her „mother’s” feet. She left the room, slamming the door loudly, feeling anger flowing through her. She had to discharge herself before getting into Hera's car. She didn't want to burden her with more quarrels with Ursa. These scuffles have become their everyday life.

Ezra released Sabine's hand as soon as he noticed the family van waiting for them in the now empty parking lot. The girl smiled, seeing the joy of her younger brother who forcefully opened the front door, desperately wanting to take this place. They often pushed through who should really be sitting there, but today she gave up, taking a seat in the back seat.

"How was it?" Hera asked, looking at Sabine through the mirror.

"Okay," she simply replied, putting on the headphones to distract herself from the conversation for a moment. She knew that when they got home it would be inevitable.

*******

"What was that?" Bo-Katan asked as she walked over to her friend. Ursa pressed her lips together and crossed her arms, not responding. "I know I wasn't supposed to interfere, but you started overdoing it. How are you going to get her back by treating her like this?"

"You have no idea what you're talking about, Bo. She will be fine, she is tough and needs discipline."

"You are her mother, Ursa!" She shouted, unable to hold back the attention any longer.

"You’re wrong, Bo. I stopped being her mother the day she left my house for another family. Now she is only a child who needs me if she wants to achieve something in life. Her present-day family will not provide her with a decent life, will not reward her best studies, will not help her climb what she has always wanted."

"Maybe she already has it. Think about it, or someday you will really lose her once and for all," Bo-Katan said softly, knowing she had no right to lecture her friend, even if she was quite right. She did not have children of her own, but she was a trainer and treated many of the girls she prepared for the competition as her own. And among them was Sabine.

*******

"We're come back!" Hera shouted from the threshold, and almost at the same moment Kanan appeared from the kitchen, wearing his favorite kitchen apron, which the children had given him for his thirty-fifth birthday. He held a steaming dish in his hands, and a grin was on his face.

"There are also my treasures. Zeb has set the table and Jacen has exceptionally dropped anything, so as soon as you wash your hands you can sit down to dinner," he said, setting a hot pan on the table. Hera kissed him quickly, then put away the groceries and disappeared behind the bathroom door, just like Ezra before. Kanan walked past Sabine smiling as he pulled the earphones out of her ears.

"Have you shown what you can do, young girl?" He asked, and the girl nodded, though without much enthusiasm. She knew he would sense a lie within a kilometer, so she didn't even try to pretend to him that everything was fine. "We'll talk later, huh?"

"Sure," she replied, giving him a slight smile. Kanan kissed her forehead, then returned to the kitchen to finish setting the table. Sabine, meanwhile, carried her belongings upstairs, tossing them casually into her small room, then ran quickly down the stairs, picking up Jacen's favorite blanket on the way.

"How was your training, Sabine? You didn't boast about your progress when we returned," Hera dropped, handing her daughter a platter of her favorite dish. The girl thanked her softly, accepting the dish and putting some food on her plate.

"Good. I've been doing much better since I've started training more. Bo-Katan wants me to start in the youth section for the next competition," she said, and Kanan looked at her in surprise.

"That's… great news! You sacrificed so much” Hera said, giving her a broad smile. Sabine made an effort to return the gesture, though the truth was, she wanted to cry.

There was silence at the table for a moment, everyone was busy eating, even two-year-old Jacen did not fuss and spit out the food Hera had prepared for him. Everything was as always. Almost everything.

Sabine lowered her head, feeling her appetite instantly lost. She stared at her fingers, still covered by the thin gloves she had put on just after training to hide her scarred, reddened knuckles. She didn't want any of her brothers to start asking questions, she didn't want anybody to start asking questions.

"You don't like it?" Zeb asked, eating his dinner. Sabine looked up, realizing the question was falling in her direction.

"I'm not hungry. I'll go upstairs," she replied quietly, standing up and thanking her for the meal.

"Sab-"

"I'll talk to her, Hera. Take it easy," Kanan interrupted his wife as he watched the girl disappear down the stairs. He sighed softly, then finished his own portion of the meal and rose from the table as well, but for a completely different purpose. He still had some work to do. He wanted to give Sabine some time before going to her to smooth things over a bit. A situation that he tried with all his might to save.

*******

Sabine heard a soft, hesitant knock on the door. She lowered the music and invited the person inside. Kanan walked slowly into the room, then sat down next to her on the bed. The girl was leaning against the headrest, she was sitting with her knees tucked up under her chin, her arms wrapped around them. There were no tears in her eyes, but they were completely dull, strangely sad. They didn't remind him of the lively and energetic eyes he had seen a few months ago.

"What about Hera?" She asked softly, feeling that her behavior changed her mother's well-being.

"Fine. At the moment he is putting Jacen to sleep, Zeb went to study a bit, and Ezra begged a story from Hera, so he lies in bed listening to the audiobook” he said.

"I should be reading him a book today. Have I failed again as an older sister?" She asked completely seriously.

"No, Sabine. I think Ezra understands a lot."

"Yeah, he's a smart kid."

The silence between them was unnatural. Sabine got along well with her family. And with Kanan in particular. She loved to discuss various topics with him, win verbal arguments and ask him of questions to which he often did not know the satisfactory answer.

"Did you dress them?" Kanan glanced at her reddened hands, marked here and there with dried blood. She denied it, sighing heavily. "I shouldn't have agreed to that," he said, taking hydrogen peroxide, some cotton and a bandage from his pocket. Sabine held her hands out to him, letting him take care of them.

"We have no choice," Sabine said softly, then hissed softly as he began to wash her wounds.

"We have to find another way. I can’t longer see how much you do for a sport you don't love. You sacrifice so much for the person who hurt you and who is now trying to control your life again.  
This is not right. After we took you to our house, I promised you that everything would be fine, that she would never hurt you again. And later? Later I agreed to her terms, he admitted, feeling guilty over him."

Everything was supposed to be completely different.

Sabine found herself in Hera's house completely by accident, but was received with open arms. Kanan knew that they had done something completely illegal by letting a teenager stay in their house, however he had no heart to throw her out on the pavement when he heard everything from her lips. Earlier, he had heard of Ursa Wren as an ambitious, passionate businesswoman. More than once, he had seen her perfect posters advertising unusual ways to achieve a goal. Few, however, knew that she had tested them on her own children, destroying everything they had. She took away their joy, wanting to fulfill the dreams of which she could only dream.

"It will be okay, it will be really good one day. The rest is here. Workouts are only once a week, counting those without my mother.” She sighed, wrapping her arms around her knees as he bandaged her hands.

"Bo-Katan doesn't spare you," Kanan commented, glancing at her bruised belly as the girl's shirt rose slightly.

"She wants me to be the best. It's nothing, it will heal."

Kanan nodded. He knew they weren't talking about the topics she wanted to raise with him, but he couldn't direct her to them. Therefore, for a few moments, they listened to the noises that accompanied this house every day.

When suddenly they heard someone trying to get into the room. Kanan was a bit surprised, but got up and opened the door, letting his less than two-year-old son inside, who was still too small to get the handle to the door handle. He ran into the room with a bottle in his mouth and a toy under his arm.

"Jace? I thought you went to sleep," Sabine said cheerfully, getting out of bed to squat beside her brother. Jacen pulled the bottle out of his mouth.

"A kiss goodnight," he gasped, and the girl laughed. However, she complied with the child's request by placing a kiss on his forehead.

"Here's my baby!" Suddenly, Hera also appeared at the threshold. She came up to her son and took him in her arms.

"Bye, Sabie," the boy murmured, hugging his mother's shoulder and waving his hand slowly at his sister.

"Bye bye Jacen," she waved, giving him a kiss and a bright smile.

"You're strong, Sabine," Kanan said softly, looking at her. Hera and Jacen left a few minutes ago. The man spent this moment on choosing the right words to finally start a suitable conversation with the girl.

"Kanan, I," she trailed off, feeling tears welling up in her eyes. She tried, she really did. She did not want to bother them with additional troubles and private matters that she should have taken care of herself. "I know I have to do all this for you. You did so much to fight for me, and although the case was lost each time, you fought for me to the end. I'm not going to quit."

"This deal is unfair, Sabine! I can no longer pretend everything is fine."

The contract they had made with Ursa Wren gave her the right to decide about her daughter's fate in exchange for Sabine's consent to live with Hera's family. It was not a bad deal at first, but it got worse every week. Sabine did not give up, but more than once she felt overwhelmed by reality, but she knew the price of fighting her mother. She knew that if they stood up to the woman, the case would be a loser.

"I won't let them take Ezra from you," she said.

Ezra was their adopted child, whom they adopted soon after he lost his parents in a car accident. He wasn't a bargaining chip, but everyone knew Ursa would have no qualms about doing anything to destroy their family, to break them.

"They won't."

"You don’t know it. Besides, we need her money."

"Not true."

"Kanan, you work day and night with Zeb to pay the bills and pay for his studies. Mine would be paid for by her, that was the deal."

"The deal was that she would treat you like a daughter, not like an immortal robot to fulfill her desires."

"You don't know her like I do, I know why she does it. Glad I ran away, my only regret is that Tristan didn't do it with me. I lost him, he hates me. I don't want Ezra, Zeb, or even Jacen to think the same of me. Therefore, I agree to everything my mother wants. This is the only way I can save them, only this way I can fix everything" she admitted, feeling the tears running down her cheeks.  
Kanan stared at her, at the girl whose childhood was like racing. However, she was not to be either a loser or a winner. She stayed between the extremes, trying to keep her balance. Kanan saw him doing literally everything every day to keep his nerves in check, not to give up. He saw a warrior in her.

"Sabine," he sighed. "You're a kid, you shouldn't worry about this kind of thing."

Kanan was right, she was still a child, but had to grow up quickly if she realized that her mother was not doing the right thing. Ursa wanted perfect children to show off at the company dinner.  
Hera had been trying to have a baby with Kanan for years. Only after adopting two children and taking Sabine in, they had their own little one. However, none of the children were treated differently. All four were equally loved, appreciated and important.

"Being a child, we are going on a trip on Sunday to celebrate your sixteenth birthday. Don't plan anything for the day," Kanan said mysteriously, and Sabine gave him a surprised look.

"We haven't been anywhere in months," she noted. "We don't have to celebrate my birthday. This is another additional cost. Zeb will tell you the same."

"Sabine, this is an important day for you. I took a few overtime hours and a Sunday off. Let's forget for a moment that it's hard. Let's be happy that we have each other."

"Hera knew about this?" She asked.

"Yes, it was supposed to be a surprise, but I couldn't keep it from you anymore," he said, then hugged her to him. Sabine smiled, inhaling its characteristic scent as if it were the most beautiful fragrance on earth. Kanan knew how to improve her mood, knew what to say and what to do.

"Ezra's going to be happy," she said, thinking for a moment about the nine-year-old.

"Sure," Kanan laughed. "Jacen too, not to mention Zeb. You are their sister, they are happy to have you here."

"I'll go say goodnight to them," she replied, flying out of his warm arms.

"Sure."

"Thank you," she whispered, already at the door. "Thank you for everything."

Kanan just smiled.

*******

Zeb heard a soft knock on the door, closed the book, and invited the person inside. Sabine slowly opened the door to keep it from creaking too loudly. The older brother gave her a warm smile as he made room on the bed for her to sit down.

"You two talked a long time," he noted, looking at her.

"I guess… I guess I needed that."

"All good?” He asked.

"Yes, now I do," Sabine replied.

"Good, kid."

"Zeb?"

"Hm?"

"I'm glad you're here," she smiled and the boy returned the gesture.

"Of course I am. For my sister I will always be here," he replied, then pulled her to him, kissing her temple.

*******

Sabine quietly opened the door to Ezra's tiny but cozy room. The little boy was asleep, breathing calmly. Another fairy tale was playing in the background, which meant that he fell asleep during another. She turned off the play and walked over to his small bed, beside which Hera had left the bedside lamp on.

For a moment she watched the child's peaceful sleep, unable to imagine her life without it. It would be a strangely sad life.  
She brushed her hair back from the baby's forehead, then felt it squirm under her touch.

"Sabine?" He asked sleepily.

"Shh… yes, it's me."

"Your mom called me a brat."

"Yes I know. She ... she says bad things sometimes."

"I'm not a brat?"

"No, Ez. You are my little brother," she whispered with a smile. Ezra gave her an equally broad smile, then a long yawn.

"I love you, Sabine," he whispered, closing his eyes.

"I love you too, little brother."

Ursa might have tried to break it. She might try to take control of Sabine’s life, but she had no right to take her happiness away. She couldn't take the smile off her lips as she returned to a house full of her loving family.

She couldn't kill her tough spirit that wanted to free itself from her.

Sabine hoped her mother would understand someday that she had ruined the lives of her own children years before. She will understand and apologize. Sabine was sure that when that happened, she herself would be able to forgive her.

Both took time.  
But Sabine had more important things on her mind than thinking about her mother.  
She had to take care of the brothers, she was their sister after all. She played a responsible role in the family.

**Author's Note:**

> I really like Ursa and I think she never do something like that but she suits a bit to this situation.  
> Thanks for reading it! ❤️  
> What do you think about this story?


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